A CHERISHED CURIOSITY - GERRY BIRON

fig. 3.11. Beaded bag, Haudenosaunee type (both sides shown). 7 inches high by 6 inches wide by 2 inches thick.
First quarter of the nineteenth century. An early drawstring reticule with a central sun with equal-armed cross motif
on one side and an abstract, four-directional design on the other. The extended top is made of silk and there is a
2-inch wide gusset made from the same material.
beaded on could not support the weight of a
heavy layer of beads.
Figure 3.10 illustrates more examples of pre-
1830 Haudenosaunee bags. The fundamental characteristics
of the earliest souvenir bags is that they
were often hexagonal in shape (although a smaller
number were U-shaped), and they had intricate,
curvilinear and geometric designs that were wellorganized
and logically constructed. These designs
included large areas of negative space. The decorations
often incorporated traditional symbols like
the double-curve, heart, diamond, sun with equalarmed
cross, and a host of other organic motifs
(fig. 3.11). Bags from this period had few design
elements that were solidly beaded. For the most
part, the beads were sewn onto a wool broadcloth
that was either red or black. Occasionally, bags
from this period are found that were beaded on
black velvet and a small number were beaded on
silk (fig. 1.7a). The edge binding was almost always
silk ribbon and usually in green, red, or blue,
although other colors were sometimes used. As a
rule, a two-bead edging was sewn along the outside
of the bag and there are variations of this stitch
as well, though the variant in figure 3.12 is perhaps
the most common.
The use of silk ribbon as an edge trim on early
souvenir bags may have been occasioned by
events in France. “Large stocks of ribbons were
dumped on the Indian market when the French
Revolution [1789–1799] enforced in France
a rigid simplicity of dress” (Brasser 1976: 38).
Franklin Allen points out that during the period
from 1841 to 1846, “there was a noticeable
falling off in the demand for silk goods” (Allen
1904:32). These dates coincide with the rapid
decline in the use of silk edging on beaded bags
and with the introduction of the Niagara floralstyle
(discussed in Chapter 4), which more often
than not used a cotton ribbon/hem tape as the
edge binding.
An early bag with a simple though elegant fourdirectional
motif is illustrated in figure 3.13. It is
made in the style that dates from the first quarter
57